Figure 1

GW151226 observed by the LIGO Hanford (left column) and Livingston (right column) detectors, where times are relative to December 26, 2015 at 03:38:53.648 UTC. First row: Strain data from the two detectors, where the data are filtered with a 30–600-Hz bandpass filter to suppress large fluctuations outside this range and band-reject filters to remove strong instrumental spectral lines [46]. Also shown (black) is the best-match template from a nonprecessing spin waveform model reconstructed using a Bayesian analysis [21] with the same filtering applied. As a result, modulations in the waveform are present due to this conditioning and not due to precession effects. The thickness of the line indicates the 90% credible region. See Fig. 5 for a reconstruction of the best-match template with no filtering applied. Second row: The accumulated peak signal-to-noise ratio (${\mathrm{SNR}}_{\mathrm{p}}$) as a function of time when integrating from the start of the best-match template, corresponding to a gravitational-wave frequency of 30 Hz, up to its merger time. The total accumulated ${\mathrm{SNR}}_{\mathrm{p}}$ corresponds to the peak in the next row. Third row: Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) time series produced by time shifting the best-match template waveform and computing the integrated SNR at each point in time. The peak of the SNR time series gives the merger time of the best-match template for which the highest overlap with the data is achieved. The single-detector SNRs in LIGO Hanford and Livingston are 10.5 and 7.9, respectively, primarily because of the detectors’ differing sensitivities. Fourth row: Time-frequency representation [47] of the strain data around the time of GW151226. In contrast to GW150914 [4], the signal is not easily visible.